From 8086 To Z80: Building A NASM-Inspired SDK For 8-Bit Retro Computing

March 17, 2026 by No comments

Assembler syntax is a touchy subject, with many a flamewar having raged over e.g. Intel vs AT&T style syntax. Thus when [Humberto Costa] recently acquired an MSX system for some fun retro-style ASM programming, he was dismayed to see that the available Z80 assemblers did not support the syntax of his favorite ASM tool, NASM. Thus was born the HC SDK project, which seeks to bring more NASM to the Z80, 8085 and a slew of other processors.

There’s both a project site and a GitHub repository, from where both source and pre-compiled releases can be obtained. Supported host platforms are macOS, Windows, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Linux, with currently supported targets the 8080, 8085, 8086 and Z80. Support for the 6502 is currently in progress.

The Netwide Assembler (NASM), targets only the x86 architecture, being one of the most popular assemblers for Linux and x86. It uses a variant of the Intel ASM syntax, which contrasts it strongly with the GNU Assembler (GAS) that uses AT&T syntax. Of course, in an ironic twist of fate NASM now also supports AT&T syntax and vice versa, albeit with some subtle gotchas.

Regardless, if ASM for these retro architectures is your thing, then the HC SDK may be worth checking out. [Humberto] also says that he’s looking at adding higher-level language support to make it a more complete development environment for these old systems and new takes on them.

Thanks to [Albert Wolf] for the tip.

Fictional Moon: Reality TV And SciFi Don’t Mix

March 17, 2026 by 5 Comments

It is a safe bet that nearly all Hackaday readers like to at least imagine what it would be like to build and live in an orbital station, on the moon, or on another planet. Moon bases and colonies show up all the time in fictional writing and movies, too. For the Hackaday crowd, some of these are plausible, and others are — well — a bit fanciful. However, there’s one fictional moonbase that we think might have been too realistic: Moonbase 3.

View of the base from above.

If that didn’t ring a bell, we aren’t surprised. The six-episode series was a co-production between Twentieth Century Fox and the BBC that aired in 1973. To make matters worse, after the initial airings in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, the video master tapes were wiped out. Until 1993, there were no known copies of the show, but then one turned up in a US television station.

The show had many links to Dr. Who and, in fact, if you think the spacesuits look familiar, they made later appearances in two Dr. Who episodes.

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Two test towers, showing the palette potential of three (R, B, Y) filaments.

FullSpectrum Is Like HueForge For 3D Models, But Bring Your Toolchanger

March 17, 2026 by 4 Comments

Full-color 3D printing is something of a holy grail, if nothing else just because of how much it impresses the normies. We’ve seen a lot of multi-material units the past few years, and with Snapmaker’s U1 and the Prusa XL it looks like tool changers are coming back into vogue. Just in time, [Radoux] has a fork of OrcaSlicer called FullSpectrum that brings HueForge-like color mixing to tool changing printers.

The hook behind FullSpectrum is very simple: stacking thin layers of colors, preferably with semi-translucent filament, allows for a surprising degree of mixing. The towers in the image above have only three colors: red, blue, and yellow. It’s not literally full-spectrum, but you can generate surprisingly large palettes this way. You aren’t limited to single-layer mixes, either: A-A-B repeats and even arbitrary patterns of four colors are possible, assuming you have a four-head tool changing printer like the Snapmaker U1 this is being developed for.

FullSpectrum is in fact a fork of Snapmaker’s fork of OrcaSlicer, which is itself forked from Bambu Slicer, which forked off of PrusaSlicer, which originated as a fork of Slic3r. Some complain about the open-source chaos of endless forking, but you can see in that chain how much innovation it gets us — including this technique of color mixing by alternating layers.

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Polyphonic Tunes On The Sharp PC-E500

March 17, 2026 by No comments

If you’re a diehard fan of the chiptune scene, you’ve probably heard endless beautiful compositions on the Nintendo Game Boy, Commodore 64, and a few phat FM tracks from Segas of years later. What the scene is yet to see is a breakout artist ripping hot tracks on the Sharp PC-E500. If you wanted to, though, you’d probably find use in this 3-voice music driver for the ancient 1993 mini-PC. 

This comes to us from [gikonekos], who dug up the “PLAY3” code from the Japanese magazine “Pocket Computer Journal” published in November 1993. Over on GitHub, the original articles have been scanned, and the assembly source code for the PLAY3 driver has been reconstructed. There’s also documentation of how the driver actually works, along with verification against RAM dumps from actual Sharp PC-E500 hardware. The driver itself runs as a machine code extension to the BASIC interpreter on the machine. The “PLAY” command can then be used to specify a string of notes to play at a given tempo and octave. Polyphony is simulated using time-division sound generation, with output via the device’s rather pathetic single piezo buzzer.

It’s very cool to see this code preserved for the future. That said, don’t expect to see it on stage at the next Boston Bitdown or anything—as this example video shows, it’s not exactly the punchiest chiptune monster out there. We’ll probably stick to our luscious fake-bit creations for now, while Nintendo hardware will still remain the bedrock of the movement.

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A Voltage Regulator Before Electronics

March 16, 2026 by 16 Comments

Did you ever wonder how the mechanical voltage regulator — that big black box wired up to the generator on a car from the ’60s or before — worked? [Jonelsonster] has some answers.

For most people in 2026 an old car perhaps means one from the 20th century, now that vehicles from the 1990s and 2000s  have become the beloved jalopies of sallow youths with a liking for older cars and a low budget. But even a 1990s vehicle is modern in terms of its technology, because a computer controls the show. It has electronic fuel injection (EFI), anti-lock braking system (ABS), closed loop emissions control, and the like.

Go back in time to the 1970s, and you’ll find minimal electronics in the average car. The ABS is gone, and the closest thing you might find to EFI is an electronic ignition where the points in the distributor have been replaced with a simple transistor. Perhaps an electronic voltage regulator on the alternator. Much earlier than that and everything was mechanical, be that the ignition, or that regulator.

The video below the break has a pair of units, it seems from 1940s tractors. They would have had a DC generator, a spinning coil with a commutator and brushes, in a magnetic field provided by another coil. These things weren’t particularly powerful by today’s standards and sometimes their charging could be a little lackluster, but they did work. We get to see how, as he lifts the lid off to reveal what look like a set of relays.

We’re shown the functions of each of the three coils with the aid of a lab power supply; we have a reverse current relay that disconnects the generator if the battery tries to power it, an over-current relay that disconnects the field coil if the current is too high, and an over-voltage relay that does the same for voltage. The regulating comes down to the magnetic characteristics, and while it’s crude, it does the job.

We remember European devices with two coils and no field terminal, but the principle is the same. There is never a dull moment when you own an all mechanical car.

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Ternary RISC Processor Achieves Non-Binary Computing Via FPGA

March 16, 2026 by 18 Comments

You would be very hard pressed to find any sort of CPU or microcontroller in a commercial product that uses anything but binary to do its work. And yet, other options exist! Ternary computing involves using trits with three states instead of bits with two. It’s not popular, but there is now a design available for a ternary processor that you could potentially get your hands on.

The device in question is called the 5500FP, as outlined in a research paper from [Claudio Lorenzo La Rosa.] Very few ternary processors exist, and little effort has ever been made to fabricate such a device in real silicon. However, [Claudio] explains that it’s entirely possible to implement a ternary logic processor based on RISC principles by using modern FPGA hardware. The impetus to do so is because of the perceived benefits of ternary computing—notably, that with three states, each “trit” can store more information than regular old binary “bits.” Beyond that, the use of a “balanced ternary” system, based on logical values of -1, 0 , and 1, allows storing both negative and positive numbers without a wasted sign bit, and allows numbers to be negated trivially simply by inverting all trits together.

The research paper does a good job of outlining the basis of this method of computing, as well as the mode of operation of the 5500FP processor. For now, it’s a 24-trit device operating at a frequency of 20MHz, but the hope is that in future it would be possible to move to custom silicon to improve performance and capability. The hope is that further development of ternary computing hardware could lead to parts capable of higher information density and lower power consumption, both highly useful in this day and age where improvements to conventional processor designs are ever hard to find.

Head over to the Ternary Computing website if you’re intrigued by the Ways of Three and want to learn more. We perhaps don’t expect ternary computing to take over any time soon, given the Soviets didn’t get far with it in the 1950s. Still, the concept exists and is fun to contemplate if you like the mental challenge. Maybe you can even start a rumor that the next iPhone is using an all-ternary processor and spread it across a few tech blogs before the week is out. Let us know how you get on.

Recycled Plastic Compression Molding With 3D-Printed Molds

March 16, 2026 by 5 Comments

Recycling plastic at home using 3D printed molds is relatively accessible these days, but if you do not wish to invest a lot of money into specialized equipment, what’s the most minimal setup that you can get away with? In a recent [future things] video DIY plastic recycling is explored using only equipment that the average home is likely to have around.

Lest anyone complain, you should always wear PPE such as gloves and a suitable respirator whenever you’re dealing with hot plastic in this manner, just to avoid a trip to the emergency room. Once that issue is taken care of, there are a few ways of doing molding, with compression molding being one of the most straightforward types.

With compression molding you take two halves of a mold, and one half compresses the material inside the other half. This means that you do not require any complex devices like with injection molding: just a toaster oven or equivalent to melt the plastic, which is LDPE in this example. The scrap plastic is placed in a silicone cup before it’s heated so that it doesn’t stick to the container.

The wad of goopy plastic is then put inside the bottom part of the mold before the top part is put in place and squeezed by hand until molten plastic comes out of the overflow opening(s). After letting it fully cool down, the mold is opened and the part released. Although the demonstrated process can be improved upon, it seems to work well enough if you are aware of the limitations. In terms of costs and parts required it’s definitely hard to come up with a cheaper way to do plastic molding.

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